Recent news from the Center for Civic Media

You are especially interested in issues of bodily presence and affective immediacy that arise in response to immersive environments, qualities which make our experiences in such worlds expecially intense and memorable. Yet there's a long tradition of science fiction writing which worries about the use of such devices for propaganda and social control, suggesting that we may find it hard to separate virtual and real experiences. What do you see as the benefits or dangers of this level of immersive experience when applied to political debates and social policies?

If only I could use this technology to brainwash my kids into cleaning up their room! Joking aside, propaganda can be an extremely effective and manipulative tool and print, radio, television have all been used throughout history for this purpose. I do hope, however, that this technology will be adopted by reputable news organizations and well-trained journalists who can help establish best practices for telling news stories. This will also enable them to have the skills to undercover when mistruths are being fed to the public.

Our lives are increasingly mediated by computers and data – a shift that is becoming more and more natural to us. From Data.gov to real-time municipal bus information, data in many forms from many sources is being made available and recombined in ways we could not have anticipated just ten years ago, when everyone used the phone book, and when restaurant and movie reviewers numbered in the tens not the tens of thousands.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation--sponsor of the MIT Center for Future Civic Media--in June 2010 announced their 2010 Knight News Challenge winners. Together, these winners form another ground-breaking, visionary class of civic media developers, inventors, and entrepreneurs.

This is video of the announcement by Knight Foundation president Alberto Ibargüen, as introduced by the Center's director Chris Csikszentmihályi. Please join us in congratulating the winners: